It was a world-record performance made all the more surprising by the disparity between the value printed for it in the auction catalog: $600-$900.

“I like to always be on the conservative side with my estimates,” says Karen Augusta, who owns the highly-regarded Augusta Auctions vintage clothing company that sold the suit. “In my heart I thought it could sell for as much as $5,000, maybe more. And then when I was deluged with phone calls from pretty major museums in the country, I thought well, hmm, this is going to sell for way more than I expected.”

Indeed. The cream-colored woolen outfit is the only zoot suit known to have been sold at auction in the United States. One buyer from a large museum said she had been waiting 40 years to find something like it.